tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31673724609710980222018-12-03T17:00:52.932-08:00James T WoodThe Author site for James T Wood. James T. Wood is an author of both nonfiction and fiction. He has written Like Mind, The Marriage Challenge, People of Purpose and several short stories. James T Woodnoreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-3379490347977694032018-07-27T22:58:00.000-07:002018-07-27T22:58:18.970-07:00High Theology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/High%20Theology." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4f0mqo13I9s/W1wC2vTAd9I/AAAAAAACL0E/mFGLObD5FscVWa-1XNfwZvyy4cIuab0JgCEwYBhgL/s400/Album%2BArt.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Coming soon (actually it's already here, but I wanted to do a soft launch to work out the kinks), my new podcast, High Theology: where I get high and talk about theology!&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One of the main goals for the podcast is to start breaking down some of the false dichotomies out there, like the idea that you can't enjoy recreational cannabis and be a theologian, or that cannabis isn't every bit as normal as coffee or beer in our daily self-medication routines. I hope you like it (and do all the subscribey-reviewey stuff that helps out podcast-type people).&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Oh, you're probably wanting a link or somesuch. Here it is now (grab a pen): eich tee tee pee ess (I just got to add the ess), colon, slash, slash, double-ew, double-ew, double-ew, dot, <a href="http://hightheology.org/" target="_blank">High Theology</a>, dot, org.&nbsp;</div><br />James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-6144231585985795152018-02-17T12:21:00.000-08:002018-02-17T12:21:01.520-08:00Black Panther is the Hero We Need (Minimal Spoilers)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OB8uhuvPKos/WoiCHjRn5ZI/AAAAAAACEaY/RDnevyJb-EcWsuqiMk48BbFM4fhC6nzCwCLcBGAs/s1600/BlackPantherPosters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OB8uhuvPKos/WoiCHjRn5ZI/AAAAAAACEaY/RDnevyJb-EcWsuqiMk48BbFM4fhC6nzCwCLcBGAs/s320/BlackPantherPosters.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I saw <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/black_panther_2018/" target="_blank">Black Panther</a>&nbsp;yesterday and I can't get it out of my head. It's so good!<br /><br />I'm learning the art of language and story, which I love by the way, but it means that I see the structure of stories more readily than I used to. Most movies I come across I can appreciate or even enjoy, but the whole time I'm picking it apart, vivisecting it to see how it works. That means I rarely love a movie anymore (or a book or a TV show). I think it's a danger of my craft that the better I get at understanding and telling stories the harder it will be for me to get lost in them (and I'm okay with that). But it also means that when something does come along and grab me, pushing aside all the scaffolding of my analytical cynicism, it is a joy to be savored.<br /><br />Black Panther was that kind of rare joy for me. Here's what I wrote in my journal about it (and it might be the first movie to show up in my journaling, ever):<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">That movie was amazing, fun sure, but important and powerful. To see a black man celebrated as a kind and just warrior-king unflinchingly juxtaposed with the global and historical oppression and exploitation of Africa and her children by rapacious "colonizers" was sobering yet hopeful. They did not hold back on the evils the hero had to face, and he showed himself, and all people--especially black people--more than up to the challenge of facing down evil and winning. I openly wept at the end when the black boy looked up at T'Challa with admiration and respect. That was me seeing Superman as a kid and spending weeks jumping off the third step of my front porch into the lawn and pretending to fly, like I was him.</blockquote>This movie isn't for me. It's not about me. And that's what makes it so beautiful to me. That's why I wept. I found that place in me that rang like a bell when Christopher Reeve saved the day. It was the place of hope. And Black Panther gave me a different experience of that same place in me. I felt that bell of hope ringing all around me, in young black boys and girls, men and women.<br /><br />Black Panther poses a difficult question, as great art often does, and asks people of African descent all around the world: What would you do if your past didn't bear the scars of colonialism and slavery? What would you do if you were suddenly superior to those who presume they are superior to you? What would you do if the power structures of the world were turned upside down?<br /><br />And the answer that King T'Challa comes up with is, as I said, kind and just. He fights evil, make no mistake about that, but not some moustache-twirling, criminally insane, megalomaniacal cartoon who is evil for the sake of being evil. No, he fights the evil of returning hate for hate. He fights the evil of unjust retribution. He fights the evil of his father's choices bearing fruit in his generation. And he does so with compassion, understanding, and always the offer of mercy.<br /><br />For me Black Panther went beyond the bones of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009" target="_blank">Blake Snyder</a>&nbsp;and predictable, if entertaining stories that are visually pleasing (I'm looking at you J.J.). It went beyond the muscle and sinew of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Story-Structure-Substance-Principles-Screenwriting-ebook/dp/B0042FZVOY" target="_blank">Robert McKee</a>&nbsp;and the appreciation of the form of a story. It even went beyond <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936" target="_blank">Joseph Campbell</a>&nbsp;and resonant archetypes recalling past stories. Black Panther is a modern myth in its own right. A beautifully constructed and formed story, fleshed out with fantastically written and acted characters, covered in the garb of the myths that resonate in all cultures, and given voice through the varied expressions of African culture and its diaspora.<br /><br />I'm so glad that Black Panther wasn't made for me!&nbsp;James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-954946112510941152017-11-01T10:00:00.000-07:002017-11-01T10:00:19.117-07:00You Shouldn't Buy My Book (and I don't like Stranger Things)There are two things I'm not supposed to say today: 1) I don't like <i>Stranger Things</i>, and 2) You shouldn't buy my book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a>.&nbsp;</i><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1k0oxLeUDVE/Wfn4TU2tOwI/AAAAAAACCl0/hffXbKnYBnETT1RhqTQkAvttYW42dCM1ACLcBGAs/s1600/13483440.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1k0oxLeUDVE/Wfn4TU2tOwI/AAAAAAACCl0/hffXbKnYBnETT1RhqTQkAvttYW42dCM1ACLcBGAs/s320/13483440.jpg" width="216" /></a><i><br /></i><br />The Netflix show <i>Stranger Things</i>&nbsp;is incredibly popular right now. My social media feeds are filling up with praise and delight for the show. But I don't really like it. I'm not supposed to say that, though. It's unpopular to have an unpopular opinion. I'm supposed to like what other people in my friend-group like. And if I don't then I'm clearly wrong. Too many people like it for it to be bad so I must be wrong for not liking it. Right?<br /><br />Or so the logic goes. For some reason (about which I have some theories) we've decided that there should be one objective preference that everyone must abide by. I know it helps us to create groups of like-minded people. I know it helps us to know, in general, if we'll like other things that the people in our group like. I know that it feels good to enjoy the same things as other people. But it also feels terrible to be on the outside looking in when the conditions for inclusion are whether or not you prefer a certain show or movie or book (also I've never read <i>Harry Potter</i>).<br /><br />And that's why you shouldn't buy my book. Or rather it's the very reason I <b>don't</b>&nbsp;want you to buy my book. I don't want you to buy <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;because you know me. I don't want you to read it because you think it'll make me happy. I especially don't want you to review it positively because of that. What I want for you is what I want for me: the freedom to choose what we prefer and to like what we like.<br /><br />On paper I should like <i>Stranger Things</i>. I fit all of the demographic markers for someone who should love the show. I grew up in the 1980s as a geeky kid who was way more into books and video games than sports and girls. I'm still into a lot of geeky stuff (I subscribe to YouTube channels about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g" target="_blank">astrophysics</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/AweMeChannel" target="_blank">forging fantasy weapons</a>). I like a lot of the same things that overlap with <i>Stranger Things</i>, but I don't like the show. It's okay. It's not bad. I just don't like it. And that's okay!<br /><br />Both the creation of art and the enjoyment of it are intensely personal experiences. To try to normalize them across a group or to use the enjoyment of a particular piece of art as an identity marker is to miss the uniqueness of each piece of art and every person's appreciation of it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/atop-mountain.html" target="_blank">I really want you to love <i>The Exiled Monk</i>&nbsp;as much as I do</a>. It's precious to me. But it's also a piece of art. It might not resonate with you. That's okay. I won't be offended.<br /><br />I would be offended if you pretended to like it. If you told me it was good but really thought it was boring. Please don't do that. You don't have to like it to like me, or even to like my writing. I'll write something different next (because I can't seem to help myself). You can come back to see if that works for you. <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a> </i>is nothing like <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Like-Mind-James-T-Wood-ebook/dp/B00E9KS8YW" target="_blank">Like Mind</a></i>&nbsp;which are both nothing like the project I'm working on right now (hint: Tinker Bell meets <i>Fight Club</i>).&nbsp;<br /><br />But if you do like it (*squee*)... Well, that would make me exceedingly happy (*jumping-up-and-down*). I wrote this story because I love it, but I published it because I think that it might be something you could love too. If you do, please let me know. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/ref=dpx_acr_wr_link?asin=B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">Let others know by leaving a review</a>. They might love it too. Or they might not, and that's okay.<br /><br />James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-37405040572338401732017-10-30T10:30:00.001-07:002017-10-30T10:30:28.909-07:00Atop a Mountain<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As I met <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/the-birth-of-story.html" target="_blank">the story that was born in Ireland</a>, and as <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/the-first-thought-of-many.html" target="_blank">I imagined the world that story inhabited</a>, I found myself going again and again to <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/the-thin-places.html" target="_blank">the thin places</a> where the barrier between the world of the known and the world of the unknown cannot quite keep the two separate. The thinnest place I found--that I have ever found--was atop a mountain rising from the sea.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k757ImNFr_4/WfD4B33oETI/AAAAAAACCgo/F2VXD6jb_Dwtrg2piIAzsz3RvzOtIqFxQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/DSC05213.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k757ImNFr_4/WfD4B33oETI/AAAAAAACCgo/F2VXD6jb_Dwtrg2piIAzsz3RvzOtIqFxQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/DSC05213.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After having climbed the steps of Skellig Michael.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I had decided to go to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skellig_Michael" target="_blank">Skellig Michael</a> during our time touring Ireland after we were done farming (a tourist visa is only 90 days long so we only stayed through the summer). We rented a car and drove through the southwest of Ireland, stopping in the town of Portmagee where we could see both of the Skelligs in the distance (Lesser Skellig is an uninhabitable rock and protected bird sanctuary). We boarded a boat and took the seven mile trip to Skellig Michael. There we climbed over 600 stone steps, laid without mortar, to the top of the rocky islet where a few monks had built a monastery fourteen centuries ago.&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">At its height the monastery probably had no more than a dozen people living there. They dwelled in dry-stone huts that were built up in concentric rings. They gardened and fished to support themselves, but with the rest of their time they studied, prayed, and copied down the texts that caused <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Irish-Saved-Civilization-Irelands/dp/0385418493" target="_blank">Thomas Cahill to suggest that the Irish monks saved Western Civilization</a>.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v_5s3OZQO24/WfD4A1Nm-RI/AAAAAAACCgo/-ftYzBcuMUghxZ-nt7tONf-trg9PohT-wCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/DSC05172.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v_5s3OZQO24/WfD4A1Nm-RI/AAAAAAACCgo/-ftYzBcuMUghxZ-nt7tONf-trg9PohT-wCPcBGAYYCw/s320/DSC05172.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The graveyard at Skellig Michael.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For me this was a coming home of sorts. If they would have let me I would have stayed there on the island, but the tour allots only about two-and-a-half hours for the entire experience. In many ways this was where my heart and my head began to reunite. This was the evidence of people who had done what I was trying to do. They chose to camp out in the thin places, to befriend them, and to make a way for others to experience them.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">From the top of a mountain or an island you can see far. It is possible to pick a point in the distance and set yourself towards it. But while the mountain can give you the vision to see where you want to go, it cannot show you how to get there. I had experienced the thin places and I knew, from the top of that mountain, that I wanted to share that with others, and even now I'm still not entirely sure how to get there. But for me <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a>&nbsp;</i>is a part of that journey.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I didn't know, standing there amidst the gravestones, that I would write <i>The Exiled Monk</i>&nbsp;or that I would try to make a living writing fiction (I was going next to interview to be a preacher on a different island, Maui). I didn't know that working to start a new church with friends would lead to heartbreak as cancer took my friend and scarred my community. I didn't know that instead of starting churches I would walk with them through the process of closing. I didn't know that grieving for my lost friend, my lost community, and my lost career would lead me to a place of knowing myself.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I often recall standing atop Skellig Michael, smelling the sweet and acrid scent of sea air and sea birds, hearing the distant crashing of waves and the immediate rush of wind, and looking out over the steel-blue water. I was overjoyed to see that island again in the most unlikely place, at the end of <i>Star Wars: The Force Awakens</i>&nbsp;where Luke had been hiding and awaiting Rey. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker growing up and in that moment I wanted to be him again, standing alone on a windswept rock, being in a thin place, wrestling with the certainty that I've been taught and the doubts I live with daily.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I love <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;and I'm terrified. I'm so scared that what I love will be hated, despised, or worse still ignored. I'm afraid that my journey of grief and joy, excitement and pain, certainty and doubt, won't matter. I fear sharing with you how important this book is to me. But not as much as I fear what it would do to me if I didn't.&nbsp;</div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;is a story about coming of age, it's about magic and romance, danger and desperate plans, about leaving behind the old to enter into a new and larger world. It's about all of those things to be sure. But it's also about what I saw from that thin place on top of Skellig Michael, the far off vision where I set my sights. It is a place of courage and wholeness, where thought and emotion are commingled, where vulnerability is strength, and where hope is the only way to face fear. I have to honor the story by living it out. I'm scared to share this with you because it is my heart, but I must and for exactly the same reason.&nbsp;</div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-41932456117615987262017-10-27T13:44:00.000-07:002017-10-27T13:44:17.833-07:00The Thin Places<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BIcARZvRBh8/WfORKWUOdeI/AAAAAAACCh0/g231PSBNoOgX1XUQzFBTsKkALmNMHqH6wCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC04981.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1435" data-original-width="1600" height="357" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BIcARZvRBh8/WfORKWUOdeI/AAAAAAACCh0/g231PSBNoOgX1XUQzFBTsKkALmNMHqH6wCLcBGAs/s400/DSC04981.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Writing <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a>&nbsp;</i>took years, not because it was a difficult task to put down words on paper, but because it required me to go to the thin places, where the spirit-realm touches and even intrudes into our own. The Celtic Christians identified these places as holy, that is they were set apart for that purpose. I had to find my own thin places to understand what I was writing about as Peek found the listening places described in the book.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">During our time in Ireland where <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/the-birth-of-story.html" target="_blank">I began writing professionally</a> and had <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/the-first-thought-of-many.html" target="_blank">my first images of the story</a> that would become <i>The Exiled Monk</i>&nbsp;run through my mind, I learned how to meditate.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Our host in Ireland, in addition to having a farm with horses, chickens, and a donkey, also taught meditation classes. She invited us to join the classes where she led students through both guided and free meditation times. I hadn't spent much time meditating before. A few church retreats had some meditation exercises, and I experimented on my own some, but I hadn't ever spent so much time in focused meditation. Learning how to sit with my thoughts was important, vital even, but I also learned how to listen beyond myself.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Quick aside, I grew up in a Christian tradition that is highly focused on logic. I heard, on multiple occasions, that I shouldn't trust my feelings because they may have been caused by a spicy burrito as readily as by spiritual forces. Emotions were seen as fallible, weak, and suspect. The idea that God might try to speak to any of us through the Spirit (apart from the bible) was seen as heresy. My head-heart disconnection was due, in no small part, to the fruit of this philosophy. But in Ireland I began learning the strength of emotions, the voice of the Spirit, and the power of the thin places.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I share this because it's a part of my story and that means it's a part of <i>The Exiled Monk</i>, but please don't take this to mean that the book is an attempt at proselytizing or converting anyone to my way of thinking about faith. It's quite the opposite of that, in fact.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">During my time in Ireland I met a woman whom I helped with some chores. As we were talking about how I came to Ireland I shared about my education and faith. It's often awkward when I share that I'm a pastor, and it was more so in Ireland where many people have strong feelings about the Catholic Church and the abuses that it covered up for many years. I wanted to explain briefly how I was different than a Catholic priest so I said, "I teach people to read the bible for themselves and come to their own conclusions." She laughed and laughed and laughed at that. When she saw our host again she told it like it was a joke: "Hey, read the bible and figure it out for yourself! Look at me, I'm a pastor!"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Her joking was good-natured, but it shows how odd it can be when a religious leader doesn't demand other people agree. A part of what I learned through meditating and visiting the thin places in Ireland was that faith--real belief--can't be taught it has to be experienced. In writing about religion in <i>The Exiled Monk</i>&nbsp;I wanted to make sure it wasn't a <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i>&nbsp;type allegory for Christianity. I spent time inventing a religion that draws on elements of Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and natural spiritual religions because I don't want to try to tell you what to believe through a story. Instead I want to tell a story about someone who is trying to figure out what they believe and why.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We each have to come to our own conclusions about the thin places. Some of us might find wholly rational and physical explanations, others might engage in mysticism, others still might learn religious practice, and, if you're like me, you'll walk a path that's all of the above and more as you see the strengths and weaknesses in all of those approaches to life. In many ways <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;is a story about what it's like when everyone else thinks they know the right path for you, and the work it takes to learn what path to walk for yourself.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">More on the path I walked and how I'm grateful for where I'm from in a later post.&nbsp;</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-86167817957266199862017-10-25T15:09:00.000-07:002017-10-25T15:09:11.459-07:00The First Thought (of Many)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>My novel, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>, was <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2017/10/the-birth-of-story.html" target="_blank">born on a farm in Ireland</a>&nbsp;in the summer of 2010, but it still had a long way to go, and so did I.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LhjUTQuuRi8/WfD7fV8LXPI/AAAAAAACCg4/2lUqO3ndYMUgsNZvvCFGu_Z0RmpmwvkNQCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC03583.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LhjUTQuuRi8/WfD7fV8LXPI/AAAAAAACCg4/2lUqO3ndYMUgsNZvvCFGu_Z0RmpmwvkNQCLcBGAs/s320/DSC03583.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The entrance to Wickle Cottage, Innishannon, Co Cork, Ireland.</td></tr></tbody></table>My wife and I would work on the farm during the day and I would write articles in the evening to make a little money for us to go places on the weekends and to save up for a tour at the end of our summer. Most of the time things worked well, but occasionally I would need to go into town to get some more focused writing done. So I would leave Wickle Cottage and walk down the hedge-lined lane to get into the small village of Innishannon. There I could get a cup of coffee and some wifi at the Found Out Cafe, along with some distraction-free writing time.<br /><br />We knew we weren't going to be able to do everything we wanted to do while we were in Ireland, so we started to prioritize and, very quickly, the <a href="http://www.worldheritageireland.ie/skellig-michael/" target="_blank">UNESCO World Heritage Site on Skellig Michael</a>, rose to the top of the list. It's a 6th century monastery on a remote island in the Atlantic where the Celtic monks would copy and preserve not only biblical texts but also the great artistic and philosophical works that would connect Renaissance Europe to the Classical ages of Greece and Rome.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CoSjasH8XlE/WfD7fGJH5tI/AAAAAAACCgw/bwrFgw0WOroZPR6KAjbv2MjzfB3HlTMKACLcBGAs/s1600/DSC03735.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CoSjasH8XlE/WfD7fGJH5tI/AAAAAAACCgw/bwrFgw0WOroZPR6KAjbv2MjzfB3HlTMKACLcBGAs/s320/DSC03735.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The main street of Innishannon village on a fair summer's day.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table>I got to thinking about what it must have been like to brave the ocean and the unknown to go to that remote island. While walking between the hedges my mind wandered to the fate of a boy who paddled himself out, away from everything he'd ever known, in the hopes that what he would find on the island would be worth the risk. I got lost in a story in my mind. It was like daydreaming, but not about something I might do or had done. I was immersed in my imagination of that boy's experience, his fear, his determination, his exhaustion, and his unyielding hope.<br /><br />While the story was born out of my growing need to reconnect my head and my heart after studying in seminary, <i>The Exiled Monk</i>&nbsp;really began to take shape as a narrative when I met that boy and began to wonder why he was paddling to an island on the horizon. What was he fleeing? What was he drawn towards? Why?<br /><br />Those questions would beget questions of their own as I struggled to understand the gargantuan task of writing a novel. I sought to place that boy and those questions in a context that I'm familiar with and have loved since I was a boy: fantasy fiction.<br /><br />In my very first iteration this nameless boy was sent by the monks on the island to meditate in a cave. In his meditation he found a magic that turned the cave from dark stone to translucent quartz and awoke from his meditative trance to see the sun shining through the rock around him. That scene barely survived (in a drastically altered form) to make it into the book, but for me it was the first thought that this boy and this journey might be a story that I could write, a world I could reveal, a novel lurking within me waiting to come out.<br /><br />What has remained, both in <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;and in my life, is the connection with that boy who would leave behind the familiar, the normal, the safe, and go out into the unknown until finding that point (in actuality the many, many points) where it feels too difficult, too far, too much, too overwhelming, but going back isn't an option. In the novel Peek repeatedly faces moments where there's no way home, there's no way to make things like they were, there's no way to undo what has been done, so the only way out is through. The only way to go is forward. That feeling has characterized so much of my life over the past seven years, especially my writing life.<br /><br />I have wanted to give up more times than I could count. But each time I have felt too committed to turn around, too invested to give up, and so I persevered. I don't know how many times I thought I was too stubborn for my own good or wondered quietly if I would fail so miserably that it would have been better to have never started to begin with. When I started writing it was euphoric, I was embarking on a new adventure. But as I struggled to wrap up the narrative, as I struggled to incorporate feedback, as I struggled to rewrite the story completely, as I struggled to understand the magic and religion in the world, as I struggled to fund the Kickstarter (and as the first one failed), as I struggled to fulfill the Kickstarter, as I struggled to learn the writing industry, as I struggled to build an audience, as I struggled to not feel like a fraud, failure, fake for not doing everything without struggle, I would look back over my shoulder to see how far I'd already come before turning again into the struggle and giving myself to it.<br /><br />It started with the thought of a boy paddling out to an island as I walked into the village wondering if I could write enough to pay for the trip to that island (spoiler: I did and I'll tell you about it next).James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-32410148656282756782017-10-23T14:24:00.001-07:002017-10-23T14:25:02.431-07:00The Birth of a Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>I started writing professionally while living in Ireland seven years ago. My wife and I were <a href="http://wwoof.net/" target="_blank">WWOOFing</a>&nbsp;and needed some sort of income. I found a place to write how-to articles online that would pay me for it. So after spending the day working on the farm I would spend the evening writing articles about whatever I could explain quickly enough to make it worth the pay. It was good work, especially in its flexibility, but it also created a growing need in me to do more with my words. How-to articles are an okay way to make some money, but they don't do much to scratch the creative itch.<br /><br />I had tried <a href="https://nanowrimo.org/" target="_blank">NaNoWriMo</a>&nbsp;the year before (let us never speak of that manuscript again), but there was something missing in my writing. I didn't know what it was (in many ways I'm still learning). But on the nineteenth day of June I began to discern what it was. I had lost the way from my head to my heart. I wasn't reading for pleasure. My thoughts weren't connected to my passions. Something was broken, I realized, and needed to be mended.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O8G3Kl2tuyc/We5UfPM0wbI/AAAAAAACCa4/On3PxJKP0tcSKN1E6F8HamH1QlaFmri8ACLcBGAs/s1600/DSC03705.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O8G3Kl2tuyc/We5UfPM0wbI/AAAAAAACCa4/On3PxJKP0tcSKN1E6F8HamH1QlaFmri8ACLcBGAs/s640/DSC03705.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reading for pleasure after a day of farming in Ireland, kept company by Nala the dog.</td></tr></tbody></table>It was there,&nbsp; looking out over the fields and farms in the fading light of a long summer day, that I first realized that while studying theology in seminary had been a great experience, I hadn't maintained a connection to my feelings as I engaged with my thoughts (and the thoughts of others). One of the simple indicators was that I hadn't been reading for pleasure. Books, that used to be my joy and refuge, had become toil. I started to fix that while sitting in a field in Ireland.<br /><br />In many ways that's where the story that became <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;was born. I still had far to go before it would become the story it is today, because I had far to go to become the writer I am today. Stories are, to be sure, a plot with characters. They are sentences and paragraphs and chapters arranged together in a particular way. They are all of that, but they are also more. Stories are the resonance of experience and empathy shared in such a way that they connect people together. I had to relearn this truth by relearning my own story as both a series of events with characters, and also a connection to myself--a reconnection of my head and my heart--shared in a way that connects with others.<br /><br />For me faith had become an intellectual exercise. I had studied and exegeted and researched and understood the history and logic of my faith, but I had lost the feeling of my faith. But it was in that losing, that disorientation, that I began to understand my own story. The faith I grew up with had been a steadfast support for me. When I didn't have a place to belong in school I always knew I belonged at church. When the expression of emotion felt dangerous, I could always emote through religious practices. But when those were all analyzed, systematized, and circumscribed by intellect I lost the way to belonging, support, and vulnerability. It would take me years to begin to find the way through, the way to reconnect my head and my heart, and this story helped me to navigate that wilderness.<br /><br />I'll share more about the creation of&nbsp;<i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;in the coming days.James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-82089727021776148742017-10-17T13:16:00.000-07:002017-10-17T13:16:34.446-07:00What Took So Long? My Lack. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SiGRBhtA758/WeUmzMb7rkI/AAAAAAACCZo/fcjW6tQ_FjYiRM2tbPDBwpjfpQe3-4ztACLcBGAs/s320/Ebook%2BCover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I thought I would have this book done years ago. I thought I was mostly done when I <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jamestwood/world-song-take-2" target="_blank">launched my Kickstarter</a> (I had over 50k words already written). I thought it would be easier than it was.<br /><br />The short answer to why this book took so long is that it took me that long to grapple with my lack.<br /><br />We are all stuck between our lack and our desire. We wrestle with them, being drawn forward by desire and restrained by lack. The message that I heard was to just follow my desires, to never give up, to keep going and I could achieve everything I ever wanted. That's true, except for my lack. Rather I should say lacks, because there is much that I lack.<br /><br />The first two attempts at a Kickstarter failed. But I kept going, following my desires. The third attempt funded. So I started working on the story, editing and submitting it for critique. Through that process I found out how much I lacked in being able to give and receive critique. With many thanks to my critique partners for their patience, we learned together what worked and what didn't. We learned how to deconstruct each other's stories so we could see the bones in our own. We fought. A lot. We wrestled together with our lack of critiquing ability and learned how to do it better.<br /><br />I threw out 60% of my story due to critique. It wasn't the story I wanted to tell and it was better and easier to cut a huge amount and write more. But I didn't know that at first. I lacked the vision to see my story through the eyes of a reader, through the eyes of someone who doesn't already have the whole world in their imagination. But I learned, thanks again to my critique partners and to the many resources available for teaching the structure of story (my twin podcast buddies <a href="http://www.writingexcuses.com/" target="_blank">Writing Excuses</a> and <a href="http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl" target="_blank">Grammar Girl</a> have been invaluable in helping me to wrestle with my lack). So I ended up cutting 30k words and writing 70k more to make a better story, to make up for what the original lacked.<br /><br />But one of the greatest lacks that I continue to wrestle with is the lack of control. While the story is in my head or on my computer, it's in my control. But when I take it to critique group or send it to beta readers or send it out to Kickstarter backers I lose control. It's not my story anymore. The story that I imagined will never be imagined by anyone else. The characters will look different, the land will feel different, the fear will connect with different fears for each reader. I can't make anyone else read the story that I wrote and loved. I can't control that. And this is a lack that I need to learn to live with.<br /><br /><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0763ZD3XK" target="_blank">The Exiled Monk</a></i>&nbsp;isn't mine anymore. Wrestling with that took a lot out of me. I love this story and I want everyone else to love it too. But I can't make anyone do anything. And that's okay.<br /><br /><br />James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-57108465124556927542016-09-22T11:04:00.001-07:002016-09-22T11:04:58.104-07:00Hope in the Midst of Fear<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TmqFA4zsLrM/V-QdMxbwwkI/AAAAAAAB1dE/CgwKJMd0ChwF2z13uPmR_k92JLLJi8P6ACLcB/s1600/photo-1453873531674-2151bcd01707.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TmqFA4zsLrM/V-QdMxbwwkI/AAAAAAAB1dE/CgwKJMd0ChwF2z13uPmR_k92JLLJi8P6ACLcB/s320/photo-1453873531674-2151bcd01707.jpg" width="320" /></a>I have hope today. Even though last night Charlotte was seized by riots, even though black people are being killed by police (173 so far in 2016), even though my friends and neighbors live in fear.<br /><br /><div>My hope isn’t because things are good today. People are dying. People are rioting. People are arguing. Things have been pretty bad lately.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>My hope isn’t because I think racism is over. It’s not. People of color still face discrimination from police, lawyers, judges, employers, and strangers.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>No, my hope is because we are talking about this. We’re talking about race, we’re talking about discrimination, we’re seeing the effects of our systemic problems, and that’s the only way we’ll begin to fix them.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>These problems are deep, ingrained. It’s the atmosphere we breathe, the background of our very existence. Our nation was founded with racism in our very Constitution declaring that black men were worth only three-fifths the value of a white man. For nearly a century our nation allowed people to be owned, not based on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin. The bloodiest war we ever fought was over the rights of states to determine whether it was permissible for black people to be owned, property, less-than-human. After black people were set free, given the right to vote—not as three-fifths of a person but as a whole person—laws were created to keep black people in their place, so they wouldn’t rise above, claim too much, think that they might be equal to a white person. Organizations were created to protect the “sanctity” of whiteness and to remind black people, with violence and fear, that they would never belong. Those laws were repealed, eventually, and declared unconstitutional. Those organizations have been rightly deemed hate groups and terrorist organizations.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>So here we are, breathing the atmosphere of what’s left. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says black people are less-than. There’s nothing in state law that allows black people to be owned. Nearly all of the laws that were used to keep black people from integrating with white people, from holding jobs, from living where they please, from voting in elections, have been stricken from the books. Hate groups have been outed as such, labeled as mongers of fear and terror.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>What’s left is unwritten, unspoken. What’s left is us.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>We carry within us the blackened, sickened, withered lungs of those who have breathed the air of our nation’s racism for generations. We have addressed the spoken, the written, the overt. We have elected a black man as our president. We have opened the door of freedom. But then we turned our backs on those wanting to step through that door. The freeing of the slaves wasn’t the end. The demolition of Jim Crow wasn’t the end. The Civil Rights movement wasn’t the end. The election of Barack Obama wasn’t the end.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The end comes when we look within ourselves and see the darkness there.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The end comes when I look within myself and see the darkness there.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I didn’t put it there. I didn’t intend to see black people differently. But I consumed TV and movies which represent black people disproportionately as criminals, as sidekicks, as magical old people, and as the first to die with the fighting starts. I consumed news stories which highlighted the problems within the black community, the use of crack, and the prevalence of gang violence, without stopping to look at the same crimes being done by white people with slightly different names. Cocaine instead of crack. The KKK instead of the Crips. Lynchings instead of drive-by-shootings. I was told in a thousand silent, subversive ways that white equals good and wholesome while black equals bad and scary.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>To be sure there are exceptions. But those exceptions are most notable because they are the exceptions. They show us that the standard within our culture has been a negative connotation to black skin.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I have hope today, not because racism is over—it’s not. My hope is because we’re beginning to see racism for what it truly is, not a Constitution or institutionalized slavery or Jim Crow laws, but a culture that places a higher value on some lives because they’re white.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I have hope because today hurts and in that hurt I see the beginnings of change, not to our laws but to ourselves. I don’t pretend to know how long it will hurt, but I do know that unless we’re willing to hurt, to cry, to be afraid with our black brothers and sisters, we won’t move our culture. We need to hurt, to see human beings like Terence and Trayvon and Eric and Anthony and Walter dead without a trial or conviction. We need to hurt, not respond in anger or fear or contempt, not to explain away or justify. Just hurt. Grieve. Weep.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>In our tears are the seeds of change. And that’s why I have hope today.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-46854536212754607212016-07-13T09:37:00.000-07:002016-07-13T09:37:56.069-07:00The Hitler Card, Godwin's Law, and Why the Future is Bright<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o6ALfBHvs8A/V4ZjTHy85HI/AAAAAAAByN8/9gifM48J5j0xkEl0RenYM4Nur2l61ydTwCLcB/s1600/HiterCard.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o6ALfBHvs8A/V4ZjTHy85HI/AAAAAAAByN8/9gifM48J5j0xkEl0RenYM4Nur2l61ydTwCLcB/s320/HiterCard.png" width="197" /></a></div>If you have been in an argument on the internet you've almost certainly encountered the Hitler Card (or Nazi Card or <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum" target="_blank">reductio ad Hitlerum</a></i>). There's even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law" target="_blank">Godwin's Law</a> which states&nbsp;"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches 1."<br /><br />The form is simple:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Person 1: We should do X.<br />Person 2: You know who else wanted to do X? The Nazis/Hitler!&nbsp;</blockquote>And the argument is effectively over, not because anyone won, but because everyone lost.<br /><br /><h2>The First Hitler Card</h2>I was watching Ken Burns' documentary <i><a href="http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" target="_blank">The National Parks</a>&nbsp;</i>recently and I came across, what might be the very first instance of the Hitler Card being played. I had to pause the show and research for a bit. Sure enough, it was a straight-up Hitler comparison in an argument about national parks.<br /><br />Here's the short version: Wyoming politicians didn't want to give up land around Jackson Hole to an expanded Grand Teton national park. The president wanted to preserve the land and so used the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_Act" target="_blank">Antiquities Act</a> to name the land (much of it donated) as a national monument. Locals were upset because they wanted to use the land for grazing and other commercial enterprises. A part of the opposition was an opinion piece written by journalist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbrook_Pegler" target="_blank">Westbrook Pegler</a>&nbsp;(who had opposed many of the president's policies).<br /><br />Pegler said:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"President Roosevelt and Harold Ickes have recently perpetuated in the state of Wyoming an act of annexation which follows the general lines of Adolf Hitler's seizure of Austria." -- "<a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SJgpAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=9cYEAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=2688%2C4933319" target="_blank">Fair Enough</a>" <i>Daytona Beach Morning Journal</i>, 18 June 1943</blockquote>That's right. The first Hitler Card was played while Hitler was still in power, while the US was at war with Germany, and it was played against President Franklin Roosevelt.<br /><br />Yeah. That happened.<br /><br /><h2>Jackson Hole National Monument</h2><div>Look on a map today. There is no Jackson Hole National Monument. It doesn't exist anymore.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>During the height of the protest a local Jackson Hole resident, who would later represent Wyoming in the US Senate and then become governor of the state, <a href="http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/clifford-hansen" target="_blank">Clifford Hansen</a>, joined a group of men that led an illegal cattle drive across the national monument land.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Congress passed a bill abolishing Jackson Hole National Monument. The president vetoed it. Wyoming sued and appealed to the Supreme Court. They refused to get involved.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>It took until 1950 for tensions to settle and for a compromise to be worked out. Now, there is no Jackson Hole National Monument because all of that land has been folded into Grand Teton National Park.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>In his interview on <i>The National Parks</i>, Hansen apologized for his opposition to the park and said that he's glad he lost. In his opinion, the Grand Tetons are a Wyoming treasure.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Hitler versus Progress</h2>It often feels like we'll never get anything done. It often feels like everyone is dropping the Hitler Card to avoid dialogue and prevent change. It has been that way since Hitler was alive and leading the Nazi Party.<br /><br />Progress isn't driven by obstructionists. Progress is driven by people who care, who believe, and who consistently work over time, despite being called a Nazi or compared to Hitler, to make things better.<br /><br />The short term feels apocalyptic. The short term feels stuck. The short term feels like nothing good will ever happen. But we don't live in the short term. We are people whose lives span decades, we are a nation that spans centuries. We have seen obstruction. We have seen panic. We have seen arguments derailed time and again. But together we've moved forward.<br /><h2>Change Happens</h2>Clifford Hansen was one of the most vocal opponents to the expansion of Grand Teton National Park. If Twitter had existed, he likely would have retweeted Westbrook Pegler's article comparing FDR to Hitler. But at the end of his life Hansen was a changed man. Not because the Hitler Card worked, but because it didn't. It was a short-term distraction technique, but the people working for a national park weren't distracted, they weren't dissuaded, they weren't defeated by harsh, empty words.<br /><br />Change isn't driven by words alone, it's driven by consistency and action over time. Neither will change be stopped by people spouting harsh, empty words. Don't be distracted, don't be dissuaded, change is not so easily defeated. Keep working, keep taking action, keep making the world around you a better place. If you do, you'll probably be compared to Hitler, just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt was. James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-45724381823371647162016-07-09T11:26:00.001-07:002016-07-09T11:26:52.529-07:00Outrage Porn Leads to Outrage Impotence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X_QlxFZRPgI/V4Ex6HeGrYI/AAAAAAAByKM/6hsBGPEl9UgyxttFoOD-wBKd2b-TfrsYACLcB/s1600/scream-1485377.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X_QlxFZRPgI/V4Ex6HeGrYI/AAAAAAAByKM/6hsBGPEl9UgyxttFoOD-wBKd2b-TfrsYACLcB/s320/scream-1485377.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>You may or may not have heard the term "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrage_porn" target="_blank">Outrage Porn</a>." If it's a new one to you, here's the short version. Outrage porn refers to the use of outrage to drive content, especially on the internet. Headlines and articles pander to a sense of moral outrage over whatever is the latest thing. People click on the headlines, share, and comment. That's like gold to online media sites so they make the next story more outrageous. Kind of like pornography but instead of using lust they use outrage.<br /><br /><h2>Outrage Inc.</h2>In recent memory people have been outraged over the shooting of a gorilla to save a child, the questionable use of a private email server, the death of a child from an alligator attack, and probably something about body shaming (I'm guessing, I don't usually run in those circles).<br /><br />The system works well. Media finds stories that strike a nerve. Is someone being a bad parent? Is a celebrity doing something wrong? Is a politician being a hypocrite? Is there someone that can be judged or shamed to allow the readers to feel morally superior?<br /><br />Great! Write it up, slap on a click-bait headline, and watch the ad revenue roll in!<br /><br />It's a business and your moral outrage is the commodity being monetized. In the same way that sex sells, by appealing directly to your <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat-listen.html" target="_blank">lizard brain</a>, bypassing your rational mind, and driving a response that you have before you're even aware that you're doing it. It's almost exactly like smelling popcorn when you walk into a movie theater. The sensory stimulus gets sent to your limbic system to see if it's something to eat, fear, or mate with. Popcorn smells like food so your brain tells you that it is and, without spending much time at all processing, your brain will often send signals to your mouth and stomach signalling hunger. You just want it. You don't think about it. You don't process whether or not you're actually hungry (at least on the first round).<br /><br />Sex works the same way. You see an image and it triggers the parts of your brain that help you to find a mate. You experience lust. Your body starts to react before your brain can process much (at least on the first round). You just want it. You don't think about it.<br /><br /><h2>Diminishing Returns</h2><div>If you work in a movie theater there's a good chance that you're immune to the smell of popcorn. It might even be off putting to you. You've smelled it so many times that your limbic system doesn't really register it anymore, at least not with the desire for food.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>People who consume a lot of pornography can become impotent as a result of the desensitization. They feed sexual stimuli into their brains, like a drug, and with each round the stimuli has less and less effect. Stimulus is increased, more and/or different porn is consumed to get the same effect until that doesn't work. Then, eventually, there's no room left to increase the stimulus. Impotence results.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Our limbic system is a survival tool. It keys in on what's different in the environment to search for threats and aids to survival, then it triggers rewards for doing things that lead to survival. Good job finding food for today; here's a hit of dopamine. Good job finding a mate; here's some endorphins and hormones. Good job getting away from that tiger; here's a flood of relief. When all of that works well we're automatically reminded, by our desire for those good neurotransmitters, what's good to eat, what leads to mating, and what alleviates fear.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But most of us aren't on the brink of survival. Most of us have plenty of food and little reason to fear (finding a mate is still a universal human struggle).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>So we find ways to get those good neurotransmitters anyway. We eat fatty, salty, sweet food in excess because it feels good. We devour images of sexuality because it feels good. And very often we seek out fear because it feels good.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>The Joy of Fear</h2><div>Wait, wait, I bet you're thinking, how can fear feel good?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not the fear, exactly, but the good neurotransmitters that your brain releases after you've conquered fear. It's like going down a slide on the playground. Most of us had the moment (or moments) of frozen terror at the top of the slide. Staring down the long, metal expanse and seeing certain death. Weighing the the danger to life and limb in going down the slide. Trying to decide if every other kid that went down the slide was just lucky or if it's actually safe despite all of the warnings your brain is shouting at you. Then you go down the slide. You feel the wind in your face and the g-forces on your body. You arrive at the bottom unscathed. Your brain rewards you for surviving. Good job; here's some dopamine!&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If you're not an adrenaline junkie constantly seeking danger by jumping out of airplanes or surfing with sharks or playing with fire, you can still get some good neurotransmitters through fear.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Fighting feels good. Not losing, not being injured, but fighting and feeling like you've won. Conquering another. You have vanquished a foe and lived to fight another day. We've made sport of this feeling, first through blood sports and then through organized sports. We can win. We can conquer the fear of loss, the fear of shame, the fear of unworthiness.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Outrage is a form of fighting. We set the stakes, not as a physical contest, but as a mental and emotional battle. The survival of our <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/200807/the-psychology-outrage-in-the-political-world" target="_blank">sacred values</a> is threatened so we fight, and when we win we feel those good neurotransmitters, at least for a while.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>The Impotence of Outrage</h2><div>Just like with food or sex, we can become desensitized to fear. We can become accustomed to the good neurotransmitters the we feel when we've been outraged and so need more and more outrage to achieve the same level of good feelings. Eventually, if it goes on too long, we lose the ability to become outraged at all.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Outrage can be a very good thing. It can help us to identify real threats to our values and to our society. It can lead us to make necessary and lasting changes in ourselves and in our communities. Outrage is an appropriate response just like lust and hunger are.</div><div><br /></div><div>But we can't mate if we've become impotent, we hurt ourselves when we eat too much, and we can't affect change through outrage if we're numb to it.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Mass shootings have horrified and outraged the nation on what feels like a regular basis. Violence by police against minorities seems to be epidemic and systemic. Yet change seems glacially slow. Mass shootings keep happening. People of color keep being hurt by law enforcement. The tensions rise, the outrage builds, and for some it boils over into even more violence.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>And so it goes.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Resensitizing</h2><div>For someone who has become desensitized through overuse of pornography the impotence can feel permanent, but it's not. Through a long process of avoiding sexual stimulus a person can become resensitized. The same thing can happen with food, changing cravings and rewiring the reward system in the brain. But it takes time and effort. Most of all it takes conscious thought.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The appeals to our limbic system are so powerful because they can effectively bypass our thoughts. The responses are automatic, almost.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Your brain immediately gets ready to respond. Your mouth waters at the scent of popcorn, your blood flows at the sight of sexual images, your heart races at the hint of danger. But then you get to choose what's next.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>You get to choose to buy the popcorn or not.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>You get to choose to pursue sex or not.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>You get to choose to follow your fear or not.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not an easy choice. If you've become desensitized, you might not even be able to choose every time. The cascade of neurotransmitters and neural pathways flows along like a mighty river. Sometimes all you can do is be tossed along and hold onto a branch to keep your head above water. But when you've cleared the rapids, you can reassess, paddle toward the shore, make a plan for next time.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Outrage can be a good thing. We need it to help us deal with the massive, systemic problems around race and violence in our country. Please stop wasting your outrage on celebrities and politicians and gossip and parents who are trying their best (or not).</div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-42193921609692011722016-06-30T09:43:00.002-07:002016-06-30T10:07:46.224-07:00New Short Story in a New Anthology -- Chronicle World: Feyland<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Azoi3e_fxPM/V3VJHF2mfQI/AAAAAAABxx8/-UuyxkspPOsEtfpCZQW5jrwhr3HSBnZIwCLcB/s1600/Feyland%2BeBook%2B-final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Azoi3e_fxPM/V3VJHF2mfQI/AAAAAAABxx8/-UuyxkspPOsEtfpCZQW5jrwhr3HSBnZIwCLcB/s320/Feyland%2BeBook%2B-final.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />I like making up new worlds. That's a big reason why I love to write scifi and fantasy: I get to imagine everything about the world. But there's also a danger in getting to make up everything about a world. Laziness.<br /><br />Yeah, I know, it seems like the <i>least</i>&nbsp;lazy thing to have to make up the geography, history, demography, and thaumaturgy of a place (and it's not an easy task), but for my imagination it can be easier than having to fit the pieces of parts of a story into a world that already exists.<br /><br />Robert McKee in his book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Story-Structure-Substance-Principles-Screenwriting-ebook/dp/B0042FZVOY" target="_blank">Story</a>&nbsp;</i>talks about the power of creative limitations. He compares limitations to the weights in a gym that offer resistance. The limitations might be harder to move, but the act of moving them, of working within them, pushes creativity.<br /><br />In <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chronicle-Worlds-Feyland-Future-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B01HJBPUWA/" target="_blank">Chronicle Worlds: Feyland</a></i>&nbsp;I got to push against the weight of another author's world.<br /><br /><a href="https://antheasharp.com/" target="_blank">Anthea Sharp</a>&nbsp;has a series of books set in a near-future where there are hover cars, fully immersive virtual reality games, and a new game "Feyland" that becomes a portal to the very real land of Fairies.<br /><br />Since I've worked in technical support (and computer sales, and computer training, and computer repair, and writing about computers and software) I couldn't help but wonder what the help tickets must look like when someone accidentally falls into a mythical realm instead of a video game. I also wondered how people from different cultures would interpret the Celtic-Anglo land of Fey.<br /><br />The constraints of Anthea's world made me think of things that I wouldn't have considered otherwise. I researched the fairie-like legends of Africa and Asia, North America and Central Europe. I learned about the beneficial fairies that helped the Aborigines of Australia and the awful demons that preyed upon the people of India.<br /><br />I chose to set my story in a call center in India, partly because it has become such a cliche in tech-support circles and partly because I wanted a chance to look at the unique culture of India (in actuality many unique cultures) interpreted through the lens of Feyland.<br /><br />Ranjeet Nagar keeps getting odd support tickets that don't seem to have anything to do with the game and certainly don't comply with his script. He doesn't have a testing rig to be able to figure out what's going on and unless he can find one the demons that used to frighten him as a child will pour into his world with very real terror and harm.<br /><br />Read my story, "Tech Support" and eleven other fantastic tales set in the world of Feyland. It's only $0.99 for the launch (until July 6th)!<br /><br />James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-43709814092129867872016-06-13T10:16:00.001-07:002016-06-13T10:16:55.582-07:00How to Be a Billy Goat in the Wake of TragedyOur world suffers tragedy. Often. Trolls use tragedy to stir up conflict but what are billy goats supposed to do?&nbsp;<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RCpWrYZ0c5M/V17qWeZAz5I/AAAAAAABxn0/mhorycgW9bQsJr3FR0G10fqoOpwEB8j7wCLcB/s1600/Evstafiev-bosnia-sarajevo-funeral-reaction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RCpWrYZ0c5M/V17qWeZAz5I/AAAAAAABxn0/mhorycgW9bQsJr3FR0G10fqoOpwEB8j7wCLcB/s320/Evstafiev-bosnia-sarajevo-funeral-reaction.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />If you want to catch up on why you should be a billy goat you can do so here:<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/socrates-and-internet.html">Prologue</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat.html">Introduction</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat-listen.html">Step 1: Listen</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/06/how-to-be-billy-goat-respect.html">Step 2: Respect</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/06/how-to-be-billy-goat-opinions-versus.html" target="_blank">Step 3: Opinions</a></li></ul><div>As I sit down to write this the United States is reeling from an attack on a nightclub in Orlando. Fifty people died and fifty-three more were injured. The club, Pulse, is a gathering place for the LGBT community. Responsibility for the attack is claimed by ISIS.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Social media is filled with responses. People are grieving publicly. Emotions are high.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Dialogue versus Diatribe</h2><div>If you want to be a billy goat that means you want to find and cultivate opportunities for dialogue on the internet. You want to offer an alternative to the trolls that do so much harm to individuals and communities. Sometimes that means not engaging.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>When our lizard brains are in control, when our limbic system is reacting, when our bodies are deciding if we should fight or flee, we can't <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat-listen.html" target="_blank">really listen</a>. And if we can't listen, we can't engage in dialogue.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>In moments of national or international tragedy the limbic system of the internet is reacting. All of social media is running through a fight-or-flight response. There's no space for listening and no space for dialogue.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>There will be plenty of people posting. There will be plenty of responses to the tragedy. But there won't be dialogue. Not yet.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Don't be Silent</h2><div>Just because there's not a chance for dialogue doesn't mean you can't show support for those affected by the tragedy. Grieve. Mourn. Weep. You don't have to be silent in the face of great evils in the world.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>As you choose to add your voice to all of the others, show extra care. Everyone's emotions are tender. Everyone is on edge and looking for threats. Do everything you can to not become another threat. Avoid politically charged statements. Avoid religiously charged statements. Find ways to support, to love, to grieve without adding to the fear and anger that are boiling.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Grieve First, Then Engage</h2><div>I'm not suggesting that we let tragedies pass us without reflection. I'm not advising that we avoid having conversations about the hard topics. In fact that's exactly what I'm hoping billy goats will do. We desperately need to have these conversations about these difficult topics so we can work together to heal from tragedies and to prevent future tragedy.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But first we need to grieve.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>First we need to get past the white-hot pain, that is so intense that we can barely stand to be near it, let alone touch it. First we need to allow our brains to adjust to the new reality of the world that includes this tragedy as a part of it. It might take a few days or weeks before things have calmed down enough for dialogue to happen.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Start with Unity</h2><div>Especially in the midst of grieving a tragedy, there's a tendency for social media to move toward the solution first. While it's possible to have dialogue about possible solutions, there's often a long chain of reasoning that leads to a proposed solution.<br /><br />More guns will fix it.&nbsp;</div><div>Fewer guns will fix it.&nbsp;</div><div>Walls fill fix it.&nbsp;</div><div>Open borders will fix it.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>We're clearly not united on our solutions, but we can easily unite around the problems. We all want to fix it. We all want to stop tragedies from happening. Start there and see how far the conversations can go. Work to understand why people are so confident of their proposed solution.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But not now. For now just grieve.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-79755383109743756212016-06-11T15:05:00.000-07:002016-06-11T15:05:12.823-07:00How to Be a Billy Goat: Opinions versus PerspectivesOpinions are something we all have, but they don't do anything for anyone but the one who has them. Perspectives are something we can share to help not only ourselves but anyone open to hearing them.<br /><br />If you're wondering why you should be a billy goat you can read about it here:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/socrates-and-internet.html">Prologue</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat.html">Introduction</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat-listen.html">Step 1: Listen</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/06/how-to-be-billy-goat-respect.html" target="_blank">Step 2: Respect</a></li></ul><div><br /></div><h2>That's Your Opinion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h1cYR09sQTY/V1yK2WStXpI/AAAAAAABxnI/bIbtJXQTTi8U2wBQfjk0zvYrzP6Yz3sYgCLcB/s1600/Roger-bacon-statue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h1cYR09sQTY/V1yK2WStXpI/AAAAAAABxnI/bIbtJXQTTi8U2wBQfjk0zvYrzP6Yz3sYgCLcB/s320/Roger-bacon-statue.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></h2><div>Billy goats work against the opinionification of dialogue. If we try to have a conversation based on opinions there's not likely to be much movement. You like watermelon; I know that it tastes awful. I like peanut butter globbed onto my sandwiches; you spread it thin like a monster.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Opinions are unassailable. No one can be wrong about their opinion. Whatever you think about something is what you think about something. Period. There's no conversation just entrenched statements.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Opinions are closely tied to our identities. We believe them with the same fervor as we believe that we have value and meaning in the world. So, an attack on our opinions is an attack on our identity which is an attack on our value and meaning. Such attacks trigger our fight-or-flight, lizard-brain response.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Opinions are the beginning of a perspective, not the end.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Put Things in Perspective</h2><div>Perspectives are the explanation of our opinions. Why do I dislike the taste of watermelon? Because I grew up not liking it, it reminds me of other tastes that are bad, and I have repeatedly tried it from different places and at different times in my life and I still don't like it. You can like watermelon for all of your reasons. I don't have to share your opinion to see the world from your perspective.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Opinions are a primal part of our brains. They are emotional reactions. In themselves opinions don't do more than just describe our feelings. But when we start to stitch our opinions together, to suss out the reasoning behind them, and to create a framework the explains why we came to have our emotional reactions, we have a perspective.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>A perspective gives us something to work with when we come to a dialogue. It gives us a way to share the why behind our opinions and, more importantly, it gives us a way to critique our own opinions and, if possible, find better ones.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Science!</h2><div>In school we all learned about the scientific method. You take a hypothesis (a guess about how things ought to work based on what you've observed), figure out a way to test your hypothesis (an experiment), and then based on the test you either confirm your hypothesis or change it to fit the new observations from the experiment.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Your opinions are your observations about the world. They are the emotional sensors giving you information. This is scary, this is fun, this is sad, this is thrilling, this is happy.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Your perspectives are your hypothesis about the way the world works. This is scary because... this is fun because... this is sad because...</div><div><br /></div><div>The beautiful thing about a perspective is that you can test it. You can check to see if it matches all of your observations. You can provide some context for your observations (i.e. opinions) rather than having them exist without any chance of being critiqued.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Your conversations with others, both online and in person, both with people you know and with people you don't (like through books and news sources), are the tests you can run to see if your hypothesis works or not.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>When you get to the end of each conversation, whether it's an online dialogue or a class in school or a book you've read, you get to revisit the opinions you started with and compare them to the opinions you had during the conversation. Then, most importantly, you figure out your new perspective (i.e. your new hypothesis).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>There's No Such Thing as a Failed Experiment</h2><div>As a billy goat you're not just working to make yourself better at having conversations online, but showing a better way. You will, without a doubt, get into conversations where the other side isn't willing to move past opinions. There's not much you can do in that conversation. Move along; move along.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If our conversations are experiments all you did was find a a way that your hypothesis doesn't work. That's not a failure as long as you learned something. Maybe you learned how to <i>not</i>&nbsp;start a conversation with someone who disagrees with you. Maybe you learned that this particular person or place on the internet isn't one where you can safely share your perspective. Maybe you learned about a perspective that you'd never discovered before.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Whatever happens in conversations, learn something, take something away, shift your perspective. If nothing else, you'll be better for it. But what's most likely to happen is that people will start to notice how you handle yourself. They'll start to see a different way to be online. Maybe you'll start a movement of billy goats.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Next up: stalkers aren't always a bad thing.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-67326916784867579552016-06-01T10:56:00.000-07:002016-06-01T10:56:22.153-07:00How to be a Billy Goat: Respect<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Tr3iDZYnKP4/V08VFdSY9tI/AAAAAAABxhQ/VcOHw4QhMDYBboqfVhbjLz0ZoVGHOdfWgCLcB/s1600/Respect-The-Very-Best-Of-Aretha-Franklin-CD1-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Tr3iDZYnKP4/V08VFdSY9tI/AAAAAAABxhQ/VcOHw4QhMDYBboqfVhbjLz0ZoVGHOdfWgCLcB/s320/Respect-The-Very-Best-Of-Aretha-Franklin-CD1-cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Respect for other people, their ideas, and their opinions is an indispensable part of being a billy goat.<br /><br />If you're wondering why you should be a billy goat you can read about it here:<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/socrates-and-internet.html" target="_blank">Prologue</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat.html" target="_blank">Introduction</a></li><li><a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat-listen.html" target="_blank">Step 1: Listen</a></li></ul><h2>Find out what it Means to Me</h2><div>Before we get too far into the conversation about treating people with respect, we need to take a moment to define the term for this context. In some contexts respect can refer to what someone earns. Like how much you respect me for my beard-growing skills or how much I respect you for sharing this post with all of your friends.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>That's good respect and should be cultivated, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the difference between treating someone in a dehumanizing manner and treating them with a basic level of human dignity.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>When the internet was just a baby, in those long-past days before YouTube came to be, I had downloaded dozens of videos of Star Wars Kid. If you don't remember or you weren't around, a 14-year-old Canadian, Ghyslain Raza, had a video he made privately, pretending to be Darth Maul from Star Wars, was posted online without his permission. I laughed at that video (and various edits of it) a lot.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I reduced a young man to something less than human in my mind. I didn't show him any respect.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Ghyslain spent years in therapy, years being bullied, years being told he was <a href="http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/10-years-later-the-star-wars-kid-speaks-out/" target="_blank">worthless and should commit suicide</a>. Thankfully he's been able to put the experience behind him and is working to move on with his life. But that hasn't been the case for everyone.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Give Respect to Get Respect</h2><div>If you consider yourself to be inherently worthy of respect, not having to earn it, but just deserving to be treated with human dignity because you are human, then you ought to extend that courtesy to everyone else.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, everyone.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, even them.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If you haven't earned your basic human dignity then no one else has earned theirs. Even people you disagree with. Even people who commit crimes. Even people who don't respect you in return.*</div><div><br /></div><div>You don't have to like everyone. You don't have to be everyone's friend. You don't have to agree with everyone. But, if you think that you deserve to be treated with basic dignity and respect, then so does everyone else.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, not many people on the internet think this way. There are a lot of double standards going on where people get angry when they are defamed while turning around and defaming others without a second thought.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Dismissing people as idiots (or fill in your favorite insult here) because you disagree with their ideas, or because you think their ideas are not well reasoned, or because you think their ideas are not well researched, is dehumanizing them. It is treating them as less than human because of their ideas or actions.**&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If you do that, then why would they respond to you any differently?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But, if you show respect, even when no respect is being shown to you, you will start to erode the culture of disrespect of dehumanization. I'm not trying to tell you it will be easy. We're into this dysfunction pretty deeply. It will take a lot of us a long time working to counteract it. But the alternative is that we do nothing and let the conversations continue to devolve.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Basic Respect</h2><div>So, what does this look like?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>First, you don't have to take disrespect. If someone is insulting you, belittling you, or attacking you, respectfully call them on it. If someone continues to do so, block them and report them. The very first step in respect is respecting yourself (I know that sounds super cheesy, but it's the truth). Figure out how you want to be treated and then learn to treat others that way.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Second, don't call people names. I know, we were all supposed to have learned this in grade school. It's not a difficult concept, but it is one that we seem to have forgotten. If you try to engage in conversations on the internet, you will be called names. You will be personally insulted. You might even be threatened or bullied.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't respond in kind. Don't call names. Don't return personal insults. That's your fear response talking; <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat-listen.html" target="_blank">that's your lizard brain</a>. You aren't actually in danger. You don't need to choose between fighting or fleeing. Take a moment (or a day depending on how riled up you are) and calm down.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Third, don't talk down to people. It's one thing to not call people idiots; it's quite another to not treat them like idiots. You've come to your conclusions about life, the world, and the way things ought to be through years of thought, learning, and shaping through your experiences and community. So has everyone else. Just because they've come to different conclusions doesn't mean they're wrong or stupid and telling them they're stupid will, pretty much automatically, mean you don't get to be a part of their community to help shape their thoughts in the future.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, demand that the people who agree with you treat the people who disagree with you respectfully. Online conversations can often become one person advocating for their side while the friends of the person with whom they disagree pile on. If your friends are piling on, make sure that they do it with respect. Defend the basic human dignity of everyone and you will start to create a climate where conversations can actually happen.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Next up: the value of opinions (hint it's about the same as the value of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr4-UrubYBg" target="_blank">Shrute</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv_EwU8-3Gs" target="_blank">Bucks</a>).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">*There are, absolutely, consequences for actions. There is, absolutely, a type of respect that is earned through actions and can be damaged or lost. I'm not talking about that type of respect. I'm talking about the basic level of dignity and rights that we all think we should be treated with. If you don't think that you should be treated with a basic level of dignity and respect, we can have that conversation separately.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">**The dehumanization process can go the other direction where people are treated as more than human. Our cult of celebrity and wealth tends to treat those with fame and power as something other than human and also not worthy of the same respect. Celebrities are expected to perform, to entertain, to be always on. If you are worthy of privacy and consideration because you're a human being, then celebrities are too.&nbsp;</span></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-51469399915094181932016-05-31T12:16:00.002-07:002016-05-31T12:16:27.342-07:00How to be a Billy Goat: Listen<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m3ARmNmxZww/V03ZzkZvC0I/AAAAAAABxf0/TkZEPIeMnkUjFSuq9TjXpzmjs5QIHpckQCLcB/s1600/Winslow_Homer_-_Listening_to_the_birds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m3ARmNmxZww/V03ZzkZvC0I/AAAAAAABxf0/TkZEPIeMnkUjFSuq9TjXpzmjs5QIHpckQCLcB/s320/Winslow_Homer_-_Listening_to_the_birds.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Listening to the Birds" Winslow Homer</td></tr></tbody></table>One of the most difficult things about <a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2016/05/how-to-be-billy-goat.html" target="_blank">being a billy goat</a> on the internet is patience. The internet is a place filled with instant information, instant emotions, and instant feedback. The speed of the internet is as fast as oral communication, but without the richness of body language and vocal tone.<br /><br />Slowing down and listening, not only to what people are posting online, but to why they are posting things, will help to improve the level of discourse.<br /><br /><h2>Fight, Flight, or Dialogue</h2><div>In many ways your brain works from the inside out. At the core of your brain is a part called the amygdala that we have in common with nearly every brain-having animal on the planet. It's such a primal region of the brain that it is often colloquially known as the "lizard brain."*&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Your lizard brain wants to keep you alive. That's pretty much it (it also wants to help you pass on your genes, but that's part of keeping the species alive). Whenever your sense get information they filter through your brain, it looks for something new and different, and checks to see if anything on a survival level is going on. The lizard brain checks to see if anything is threatening your survival, if there's anything to eat, or any reason to try to procreate.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>It's what happens next that's important.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>What <i>should</i>&nbsp;happen next is we run the lizard brain response back through the rational parts of our mind. That's why we don't usually attack people on the street, why we don't leap across the counter at the restaurant and take the food, and why we can be monogamous when we choose to. The lizard brain is working to keep us alive, but the rest of our brain is working to determine <i>how</i> we live.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Because our lizard brain is looking for things that are different and things that are primal, we usually respond most strongly to those things. We repost things that outrage us, things that terrify us, things that make us want to either fight or flee.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Neither of those responses is conducive to conversation.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Brain Spaces</h2><div>Your brain learns to respond differently when you're doing different things. When you hear an explosion in November, your brain will likely trigger a fight or flight response. But when you hear one in early July you're going to be far less afraid. For me, if I see a spider across the room while I'm fully clothed and have shoes on my feet, I can notice it and move on with my life. But if I'm stumbling around, barefoot and in my pajamas and I happen across a spider right in front of me I will, in all likelihood, scream like a child.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Our brains shift gears and determine what gets sent down to the lizard brain for a survival check. The more we feel safe and at ease, the more likely we are have something trigger our survival check. If you're out, crossing the street during the day cars coming at you are normal and expected. Your lizard brain trusts the rest of your brain to figure it out and keep you alive.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the major issues with online communication is that our brain space is often in the home-safe zone rather than in the out-in-public zone. If I go downtown on a busy day I expect to see and hear things I don't agree with. I note them and then, usually, ignore them. But when I'm at home I expect to be safe. My lizard brain expects the stimuli to be of the food and sleep variety.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Because of the internet and smartphones we have the stimuli of a busy day downtown in the palm of our hand as we're stumbling around in our PJs before going to sleep. Our poor lizard brains don't know what to do.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Slow Down, You Move too Fast</h2><div>It's a discipline to be able to see things online that are outrageous or terrifying and to do nothing.** That's the first step in having great dialogue online, however. Do nothing. Wait. Listen.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>When your heart rate spike because you see something offensive, when your fingers twitch with the need to respond in anger or fear, when the arguments against a person line up in your brain ready to be deployed, that's the time to stop. Feed the response of your lizard brain back into your rational mind.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>What are your afraid of? What are you angry about? Why did this post trigger your lizard brain to respond?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>What fears and angers do you think drove the person who posted it? Why do they feel so threatened?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Sit with those questions until your heart rate returns to normal. Sit with them until your fingers stop trying to compose a heated reply on their own. Listen to what your rational brain is trying to tell you and listen to what drove the person to post what they did in the first place (not what they actually posted, but the underlying threat they felt).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Next up we'll talk about how to engage people.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">*This is an incredible simplification of the concepts going on. If you want to know more about the "lizard brain" do some research on the limbic system.&nbsp;</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">**As an aside, this is a very similar process to seeing pornography online and choosing to not respond from the lizard brain. It takes conscious, practiced effort to resist the pull of&nbsp;instinctual&nbsp;responses.&nbsp;</span></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-57141436344659057022016-05-27T11:23:00.000-07:002016-05-31T11:32:55.139-07:00How to be a Billy Goat: Introduction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e0Qk1qMCyqM/V0iLcUyrVaI/AAAAAAABxdw/gOpdAgku-cE3uxFTmwjyR485tKEqrIEIACLcB/s1600/billy%2Bgoat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e0Qk1qMCyqM/V0iLcUyrVaI/AAAAAAABxdw/gOpdAgku-cE3uxFTmwjyR485tKEqrIEIACLcB/s320/billy%2Bgoat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Last night I got to share some ideas about being a billy goat in an internet filled with trolls. It was at the first ever <a href="http://www.vantalks.org/" target="_blank">VanTalks</a>&nbsp;(video will be available soon).<br /><br />I shared (one of) the origins of the metaphor of a troll as a bully on the internet: the Norwegian fairy tale "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" in which a troll lives under a bridge and keeps the goats from grazing in a lush pasture.<br /><br />Right now it seems like the internet is filled with trolls, like there's no good comments section, like there isn't a place to have good conversations online. The way we can start to change that is by being the opposite of trolls. We need to be billy goats.<br /><br /><h2>Trolls</h2>Trolls are rude, abrasive, and abusive.<br /><br />Trolls are confident in what they know and cannot, will not be swayed from their certainty.<br /><br />Trolls are never, ever, ever wrong.<br /><br />It's nearly impossible to have a conversation with a troll and, what's worse, trolls often succeed in devolving the conversations around them. There might be good people trying to have a decent conversation, but in walks a troll and things fall apart. People start taking sides. It stops being a conversation and starts being a shouting match.<br /><br /><h2>Bad News</h2>I hate to say it. I don't want to be a downer. But the truth is we won't ever be rid of trolls. A medium like the internet that allows anyone anywhere anytime to share their thoughts will the world will, inevitably allow thoughts that are abusive, hurtful, and intransigent.<br /><br />Fighting the trolls, more often than not, won't do much of anything to help. Trolls love the conflict and won't be swayed by even the best of arguments.<br /><br />Trolls are here to stay. But they don't have to dominate the conversations. The reality is that trolls are the exception that is writing the rules. They are the tail that's wagging the dog. They are the minority influencing the majority.<br /><h2>Billy Goats</h2><div>We can offer an alternative. We can offer a different way. We can be the billy goats to the trolls of the internet.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Billy goats treat everyone with dignity and respect (even trolls).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Billy goats seek to understand before they seek to be understood.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Billy goats willingly and graciously admit when they are wrong.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If you want to start being a billy goat there's something you need to know. This isn't a short term engagement. This isn't something you can sign up for and knock out in a week. This will take time and commitment. It will take consistency and it will mean you are attacked by trolls.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But it also means that you are stepping between the vulnerable and the trolls, that you are showing people a different way to interact online, that you are a part of a minority that is influencing the majority for good.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>C'mon, be a billy goat.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Next up (next week) what this looks like in real life and some practical next-steps.&nbsp;</div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-90397393152466842822016-05-26T15:25:00.001-07:002016-05-26T15:25:16.406-07:00Socrates and the Internet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8v5wOs9Wx2M/V0dymwHjTrI/AAAAAAABxdI/5-h7SnebwvMuPjakcxsOVmOaoYYnKTzJACLcB/s1600/Socrates.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8v5wOs9Wx2M/V0dymwHjTrI/AAAAAAABxdI/5-h7SnebwvMuPjakcxsOVmOaoYYnKTzJACLcB/s320/Socrates.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Socrates said “[T]hey will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”<div><br /></div><div>He could have been talking about the internet. He might as well have said: "Don't read the comments section." But he was talking about a different communication technology: writing.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Socrates didn't like writing; he thought it undermined the thoughts of people and made them vapid. The irony is, we only know that Socrates said this because his student, Plato, wrote it down.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Communication and the Brain</h2><div>The way we communicate affects how we think, which affects how we process ideas, which affects everything about us as human beings. Socrates was right, moving from oral to written communication fundamentally changed humanity. Ideas were no longer bound by space and time, the great thinkers were able to build upon each other's work, and whole fields of study like philosophy, religion, history, mathematics, and science came into being. But there was a cost. Thought became a specialized field. Ideas became the property of the wealthy and powerful. The conversation of humanity was concentrated into the hands of a very few, well educated people.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The rise of the printing press in Europe (it had been around in China for centuries before) paired movable type with an alphabet-based language and drastically decreased the cost of written communication. Within just a few years of Gutenberg's first printing Europe began to transform at a fundamental, cultural level. The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Protestant Reformation were all spurred onward by the rapid spread of ideas, not among the wealthy and powerful, but among the common people. Culture changed, the people were no longer willing to be ruled from ivory towers and castle walls, the masses revolted based on the power of ideas. On the far shores of a distant continent a few ragged colonies took up those ideas and rebelled against the most powerful nation on the planet.</div><div><br /></div><h2>The Internet is Kind of a Big Deal</h2><div>There have only been a few changes in the way human being communicate. The first was from oral to written, then from script to printing, and now we're in the midst of third great change from printing to electronic communication. For ease I'll use the internet as a catch-all term to refer to all of our instantaneous, electronic communication (i.e. texting, emailing, blogging, messaging, etc.).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>With each shift in communication the speed of idea transmission and the percent of the population involved have increased. Oral society was slow and ideas could only be shared as far as a voice could be heard. Writing sped things up and allowed more people to receive the ideas (though for much of its history written communication was still, primarily, transmitted to people orally). Printing increased the speed and the participants even further. Now with the internet we have almost half of the population on the planet able to communicate with each other instantaneously.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>That has immense ramifications for how our brains work, how we process ideas, and what our culture looks like. And we're only just starting to see those effects really playing out in the world.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h2>Socrates was Right</h2><div>There is always a cost to go with the benefit of changing the way we communicate. The internet is reshaping our brains, for good and for ill. We are losing something with the rapidity of the communication and the number of voices that are clamoring for a place in the conversation. But we are gaining something as well.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Socrates was right that there's a cost, but he was wrong in not wanting to pay the cost of changing the technology we use to communicate. We should weigh the cost. We should know the cost. We should consciously and actively work to mitigate the cost. But we cannot avoid the cost of communication on the internet, nor should we.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Next up: what you can do to help.&nbsp;</div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-67804229342709411762016-05-23T15:29:00.000-07:002016-05-23T15:29:38.655-07:00VanTalks, Civil Discourse, and Billy Goats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FKFWaYBnB3I/V0OB9pv4ESI/AAAAAAABxYM/-ZiSJHUozWgMJ7qHXDtR4Y7C9KDvO78UwCLcB/s1600/VanTalks-v-points.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FKFWaYBnB3I/V0OB9pv4ESI/AAAAAAABxYM/-ZiSJHUozWgMJ7qHXDtR4Y7C9KDvO78UwCLcB/s320/VanTalks-v-points.png" width="320" /></a></div>This Thursday I'll be giving a talk at the first ever <a href="http://vantalks.org/" target="_blank">VanTalks</a>. It's styled after TED talks but focused on the thought leaders, innovators, and creators in the local community.<br /><br />My topic is on civil discourse online. Something that seems like an oxymoron. You're not supposed to read the comments section, you're not supposed to talk about politics or religion, and you're certainly not supposed to expect anyone to change their mind due to a conversation online.<br /><br />I'm not okay with that. I used to be. I used to be checked out, to ignore the comments, and to avoid arguments. I thought that was the best path, the path that offended the fewest people.<br /><br />If you've followed me online for very long you know I don't feel that way now. For the past five or six years I have actively engaged in conversations online about the most difficult topics. No conversation has been off limits and, with very few exceptions, the conversations and conversationalists have been thoughtful, respectful, and civil.<br /><br />On Thursday evening (6:30pm at the Kiggins Theater in downtown Vancouver) I'll share what changed, what I've learned, and why I think civil discourse online is not only possible, but necessary.<br /><br />And I'll tell you why you should be a billy goat.<br /><br /><a href="https://ticketing.us.veezi.com/purchase/415?siteToken=WxtzsI6OCkSMiLYqPrAyPA==" target="_blank">Buy tickets (they're only $10)</a> and tell your friends (or enemies, they need to hear this too).James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-49567242542259806112016-05-04T12:02:00.000-07:002016-05-04T12:02:08.919-07:00Game of Thrones Election Signs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6DnV65LpXIg/VypG-tlY_XI/AAAAAAABtts/mXjcF_zDdhgv36cBFFlb3RNDBqUSPYwtgCLcB/s1600/JoffreyBaratheon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6DnV65LpXIg/VypG-tlY_XI/AAAAAAABtts/mXjcF_zDdhgv36cBFFlb3RNDBqUSPYwtgCLcB/s320/JoffreyBaratheon.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-haC8SB_9PO4/VypG6xE6R6I/AAAAAAABttg/bEs05KE8jRk1Kxa96cEKHF3SG4eQl1AEQCLcB/s1600/JonSnow.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-haC8SB_9PO4/VypG6xE6R6I/AAAAAAABttg/bEs05KE8jRk1Kxa96cEKHF3SG4eQl1AEQCLcB/s320/JonSnow.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ac8ZklUPTfU/VypG-sWbiWI/AAAAAAABttw/E09oCwhO6uUbF3pcx_e7-qxoe0BYYMcjgCLcB/s1600/NedStark.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ac8ZklUPTfU/VypG-sWbiWI/AAAAAAABttw/E09oCwhO6uUbF3pcx_e7-qxoe0BYYMcjgCLcB/s320/NedStark.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EtdX96JJb2c/VypG7cM7c6I/AAAAAAABttk/04OCTnFF6BMKz22gMu74qX0zecMmkGMqACLcB/s1600/RobertBaratheon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EtdX96JJb2c/VypG7cM7c6I/AAAAAAABttk/04OCTnFF6BMKz22gMu74qX0zecMmkGMqACLcB/s320/RobertBaratheon.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tR3cLNPsxgs/VypG75QDcMI/AAAAAAABtto/8RDeuDAryE8XNXMIxRaUDbIsYWGoKO_FgCLcB/s1600/StannisBaratheon.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tR3cLNPsxgs/VypG75QDcMI/AAAAAAABtto/8RDeuDAryE8XNXMIxRaUDbIsYWGoKO_FgCLcB/s320/StannisBaratheon.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-49328258780273741002016-03-09T11:47:00.001-08:002016-03-09T11:47:44.603-08:00The Long, Slow Death of NOOK and the Problems with DRM, eBook Pricing, and Publishing<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qW13-LPApmw/VuB1U0W3c3I/AAAAAAABtKI/IX1apY6GqCA/s1600/asdf_nook_screensaver_by_corbin052198-d4k6si9.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qW13-LPApmw/VuB1U0W3c3I/AAAAAAABtKI/IX1apY6GqCA/s400/asdf_nook_screensaver_by_corbin052198-d4k6si9.png" width="400" /></a>If you haven't heard yet, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2500329,00.asp" target="_blank">Barnes &amp; Noble is closing the UK NOOK store</a>. This comes after they <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/09/barnes-and-noble-nook-store-closing/" target="_blank">closed down all of the other markets besides the US and UK</a> over the summer. With most of the ebook sales going through Amazon and Apple, it's no wonder that B&amp;N is having trouble, but were it simply brick and mortar stores that failed there wouldn't be an issue, or if the ebooks had been priced as essentially disposable content, or if the ebooks hadn't been saddled with digital rights management (DRM).<br /><br /><h3>Digital Ownership</h3><div>For most things in the world, when you pay for them you own them. If you pay for your hamburger you can choose to eat it, spray paint it red and frame it, or throw it at a passing unicyclist while they try to hit you with their lance made of straws. But digital ownership is different.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>You don't own your copy of your computer's operating system, you only have a license to that OS granted by the software maker and, if they so decided, you could be kicked off of your computer in an instant. That wouldn't be very smart for a company to do when they want to make money, but what happens when a company can't make money? What happens when a company like Barnes &amp; Noble can't support the software they created?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Digital Rights Management</h3><div>When there's DRM involved what happens can be pretty terrible.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Even though I don't own my OS, I could still run it offline, make changes as necessary, and get along fine for a while if the software company decided to cancel my license. If my MP3 collection were to suddenly be turned off by the company that hosts it, I would still have the copies of the files on my computer that I could listen to, just without the convenience of listening to them everywhere through the cloud service.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But some levels of DRM prevent copying files from one location to another, some DRM requires internet access to verify the validity of the file and the reader hardware. These tools exist to prevent piracy, but usually only serve to annoy honest customers. Unfortunately, when the company that instituted the DRM goes out of business, there may not be a legal way to continue to use the files that you have paid for.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>eBook Pricing</h3><div>Most ebooks published by the major publishing houses are around $10 apiece, while most ebooks published by independent houses or authors are around $3. I don't want to get into too many of the arguments about the difference in price. There are plenty of voices on both sides of that debate.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Where it comes into play here is in what you can or cannot do with that ebook once you've paid your money. If you bought a paper book, you could sell it to a used bookstore, you could loan it to a friend, you could pack it in a box and ship it around the world, or you could leave it on your shelf until you decide to read it and then know it will be readable. But with an ebook you can't sell it, you can't loan it (most of the time), you can't send it to anyone else, and if you leave it on your digital shelf, you have no guarantee that you'll be able to read it in the future.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the key pieces here is that the ebooks published by the major publishing houses also employ DRM so you can't make copies, you can't make a backup for yourself, you can't change formats, you can't do anything with that ebook but read it on the devices that are approved.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>You are, essentially, renting your ebooks if they have DRM (note that I won't voluntarily put DRM on any of my ebooks or stories). And, if you are paying the higher price demanded by the major publishing houses, you are renting a book in electronic format that is less versatile, less capable, and less long-lived than a paperback that might be the same price (or cheaper if you get it used).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Publishing</h3><div>Businesses exist to make money and they do that by providing a good or service. Right now the publishing industry doesn't know what they're providing or how to make money off of it. In the past publishing provided a good: books. That physical thing had value that could be exchanged for money.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But now with ebook readers and ebooks what's being sold isn't exactly a good. There isn't a physical thing with value. But neither is it completely a service because each book is valued differently and separately. The major publishing houses are trying to retain the goods-model of pricing while independant publishers are gravitating more toward the service-model of pricing.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>What this means for readers is similar to what shift toward digital music has meant (or digital video, or digital news). Namely, readers will have to be more aware, more vigilant, and more flexible with the increased options.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>As an author I want to make this as easy as possible for you. If you have a copy of any of my books on your NOOK platform (regardless of which region you're in), let me know and I'll get you a DRM free version for your platform of choice. I know that may not be the way to make the most money, but it's the way I would want to be treated, so it's the way I'll treat my readers.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-3473830003737164082016-02-15T10:53:00.002-08:002016-02-15T10:53:58.859-08:00I've Got Your PG-13 Deadpool Right Here!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b1U8ZBR0ug4/VsIXzZtp7LI/AAAAAAABs4E/I3KzbQE8xgY/s1600/new-deadpool-promo-images-offer-hints-movie-s-unconventional-tone-492440.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b1U8ZBR0ug4/VsIXzZtp7LI/AAAAAAABs4E/I3KzbQE8xgY/s320/new-deadpool-promo-images-offer-hints-movie-s-unconventional-tone-492440.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I got to see <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1431045/" target="_blank">Deadpool</a></i> last night. How shall I say this? It is awful and amazing. No matter your tastes or preferences you will find something in the movie to deeply offend you. If you're like me, that uncomfortable feeling of being offended will melt quickly into bouts of gut-wrenching laughter.<br /><br /><b>Disclaimer: This movie should not be viewed by anyone under the age of 31 without a papal edict and probably a fistfull of indulgences.&nbsp;</b><br /><b><br /></b>Because of the R-rating for the movie there were several fans that <a href="https://www.change.org/p/20th-century-fox-ryan-reynolds-20th-century-fox-please-release-a-pg-13-version-of-deadpool-in-addition-to-r-rated-cut" target="_blank">petitioned the studio</a> to release a PG-13 cut of the film. But for Deadpool, the R-rated bits are almost completely inextricable from the rest of the movie so that <a href="http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/deadpool/252119/deadpool-pg-13-petition-gets-response-from-ryan-reynolds" target="_blank">Ryan Reynolds said</a>&nbsp;the only thing remaining would be a trailer.<br /><br />While I haven't read any of the solo Deadpool books, I have always liked the character when he shows up (my favorite so far was in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1325753/" target="_blank">Hulk vs</a>, you should check it out if you have the chance). And, after seeing Deadpool, I realized how much he was an influence for the main character in my novel <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Like-Mind-James-T-Wood-ebook/dp/B00E9KS8YW" target="_blank">Like Mind</a>.&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WntYZp9dPtg/VsIcXvvVTpI/AAAAAAABs4Q/995XbY2TDas/s1600/Wood_LIKE_MIND_EbookEdition.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WntYZp9dPtg/VsIcXvvVTpI/AAAAAAABs4Q/995XbY2TDas/s320/Wood_LIKE_MIND_EbookEdition.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I have often said that <i>Like Mind</i>&nbsp;is a PG-13 book and, after having seen what Deadpool did with a full R, I'm happy to keep my work in the PG-13 realm.<br /><br />In <i>Like MindI y</i>ou get all of the snark, pop-culture references, 4th-wall breaking, action, explosions, guns, fighting, car chases, nicknames, romance, and unnecessary exposition of a Deadpool movie without the horribly offensive nature of Deadpool himself.<br /><br />So if you can't bring yourself to see Deadpool because it is so very, very R-rated, then get a dose of the same type of humor in a PG-13 package.<br /><br />Or, if you were like me and already watched Deadpool and you need a half-way-house for your soul to come back from the utter darkness, then <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Like-Mind-James-T-Wood/dp/1491254564" target="_blank">pick up <i>Like Mind</i>&nbsp;</a>as a brain-palette cleanser so you can once again speak acceptably in mixed company (by which I mean speaking to other human beings).<br /><br />What did you think of Deadpool?<br /><br />Would you have preferred a PG-13 version?James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-66581072024197272492016-02-09T14:40:00.002-08:002016-02-09T15:16:50.870-08:006 Ways an Author is Like a Role-Playing Character<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hcWm6BAEO80/Vro0CeBBfiI/AAAAAAABs0Y/eVAPnNYrdjE/s1600/Dice_%2528typical_role_playing_game_dice%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hcWm6BAEO80/Vro0CeBBfiI/AAAAAAABs0Y/eVAPnNYrdjE/s320/Dice_%2528typical_role_playing_game_dice%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I've been doing this whole writing thing for a few years now and I have come across, in roughly equal numbers, writers with varying styles and writing guides promoting those various styles. I know writers who are hard-core engineers and plot out their stories using spreadsheets and Github. I know other writers who use note cards taped to the wall to visualize their tale. Others still eschew plotting altogether and simply write words until the story coalesces out of nothingness.<br /><br />All of that got me thinking about Dungeons and Dragons. Follow with me here.<br /><br /><h3>There's No Such Thing as a Bad Character or Writer</h3>When you first sit down to start playing D&amp;D (or any such role playing game), the first step is to create a character. The character is created by rolling dice and assigning those numbers to different statistics that define the abilities of the character. The rolls often determine how the character will need to be played, which attributes will be emphasized and which will need to be minimized.<br /><br />If I were to roll up a character with a lot of strength and charisma but with very little wisdom or intelligence, I wouldn't play that character as a mage or cleric, but that same set of attributes would make a nice cavalier. There isn't really a bad roll when it comes to character, just limits on the way that a character can be played.<br /><br />The same is true for writers. Some of us are ideal engineers, others are poets, others are marketers, and others are professors, but in the end every one of us can write a compelling story. The stats we rolled and the characters we play don't exclude us from writing, but they do force us to consider the best way to take advantage of our strengths and minimize our weaknesses.<br /><br /><h3>We've All Got High Stats</h3><div>Authors and D&amp;D characters come pre-set with strengths. For the authors it's a mix of nature and nurture that gave them abilities that turn word-piles into stories. In many ways the abilities of an author are as random and uncontrollable as the roll of the dice for an RPG character. None of us had any choice in where we were born or to whom, we weren't able to decide our genetics or our economics. We all just came into this world with the attributes that were given to us and we have to make the best of it.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The engineer, by trade, may excel at creating believable, well-researched worlds, while the philosopher may force the readers to ask the deep questions. Neither is any less a writer though their strengths vary wildly.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>We've All Got Dump Stats</h3><div>The flip side of the randomness of our strengths is the utter randomness of our weaknesses. Some of us are born with disabilities or conditions, some of us develop them throughout life. Some authors are crippled by dyslexia others by depression. Some authors struggle with writer's block, unable to come up with ideas, while others are overwhelmed by writer's lock being swarmed by so many ideas they can't seem to choose which one to write.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>If your RPG character has terrible dexterity, that doesn't make it an unplayable character, but it does demand that you take the stat into account while playing. If you don't, the game or the writing may not be very much fun.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Rigidity Causes Struggle</h3><div>If you were to sit down, before rolling up a character, and decide that you could only play a warrior in your D&amp;D game, you might be in for a long slog. If you roll up a character with no strength or constitution, your warrior will be doing precious little damage with each hit and have even fewer hitpoints with which to stay alive. You could, if you were committed, push through, get gear that minimizes your weakness, and never leave the side of your party's healer, but every fight would be a struggle to manage the stats of your character.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes as a writer, I want to do things the way my heroes do. I want to write <i>Game of Thrones</i>&nbsp;or <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, but I'm not G.R.R.M. or J.R.R.T. (I don't even have that many initials). If I were to insist on writing according to a certain formula or in a certain style, I might be able to do so, but not without constantly managing the struggle of that choice (and likely relying on my cleric-editor to bail me out time after time).&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Flexibility Leads to Fun</h3><div>If, instead of choosing to force your character down the path of a warrior, you decided to emphasize your character's strengths you might play it as a bard or a thief that doesn't need to be strong or tough. Having that flexibility gives your more options when playing the character which can lead to more fun in the actual game. Struggle is, absolutely, a part of both role-playing and writing, but so too is the fun of rolling high and doing awesome things.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>By no means am I saying that authors should only concentrate on their strengths and avoid their weaknesses, because we all need to work and grow in our craft, but if it's not fun some of the time, then it'll be increasingly difficult to keep going when the struggle comes. Keeping fun as a part of the work is the carrot that balances out the stick.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Adventure, Loot, Level Up, Repeat</h3><div>The point of D&amp;D isn't to craft the best character with the best stats, but rather to go on adventures. The character serves as a vehicle for getting to the adventures not a replacement for the adventures. I'll be the first to admit that it can be fun to obsess over abilities and backstory and gear to tweak a character until it's shiny and perfect. But then that character needs to get beat up and messy as it tackles the challenges in its world. The reward for that effort and struggle is loot and experience that you can use to make your character better so you can go out and have more adventures to get more loot and experience and so on.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>As a writer it is absolutely important to set the stage for adventure by working on the building blocks. Take classes, learn grammar, dissect story, understand character, go to conventions, participate in workshops, even get a degree. But all of those things, as fun and important as they are, exist to get you ready for adventure, not to replace it. There comes a time when you, the shiny, perfect author, must go out and face the adventures. You may be battered and messy after the attempt, you may fail, you may need near-magical healing to get back on your feet, but without adventure there's no improvement and no way to get to bigger adventures in the future. If you don't get rejected submitting your story, if you don't get bad reviews, if you don't have lackluster sales, you lose out on the experience and the leveling up without which greater adventures would be much more difficult to handle. Also, the loot of the writing adventure can be pretty nice. Writing credits, awards, good reviews, and plain-old money all help to make the next writing adventure that much more fun.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Metaphors break down at some point. You probably don't have orcs or goblins to slay in your writing life (unless you do), but the point is this: there is no one template for what makes a writer. If you're a dyslexic introvert with a degree in chemical engineering or a natural poet who's the life of the party and struggles with depression, you have just as much opportunity to thrive as a writer. But trying to fit yourself into someone else's template, trying to judge your weaknesses by someone else's strengths, or trying to perfect yourself before you ever dare put down words on the page will keep you from writing as surely as trying to run a thief with no dexterity or a mage with no intelligence.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-1764391467674809192015-12-22T10:33:00.000-08:002015-12-22T10:33:07.573-08:00Star Wars, Storytelling, and Nostalgia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w8a90GGNYKE/VnmOZ2Fu6BI/AAAAAAABsBQ/6enYMvJwYLs/s1600/Original%2BTrilogy%2B-%2BDarth%2BVader%2B16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w8a90GGNYKE/VnmOZ2Fu6BI/AAAAAAABsBQ/6enYMvJwYLs/s320/Original%2BTrilogy%2B-%2BDarth%2BVader%2B16.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I may need to recant my previous post about Star Wars. I said that "<a href="http://www.jamestwood.com/2015/05/why-jj-abrams-doesnt-understand-star.html#" target="_blank">JJ Abrams Doesn't Understand Star Wars</a>" after having seen the trailer for <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2488496/?pf_rd_m=A2FGELUUNOQJNL&amp;pf_rd_p=1971070862&amp;pf_rd_r=1Z0B0351X9MBVVBEQZWK&amp;pf_rd_s=right-6&amp;pf_rd_t=15061&amp;pf_rd_i=homepage&amp;ref_=hm_cht_t0" target="_blank">The Force Awakens</a></i>. Now that I've seen the movie I need to revise that statement.<br /><br />First, I promise not to spoil any plot points in the new movie. I will, however, let you know some of my feelings about the movie, which might spoil things for some people. You have been warned.<br /><br /><h3>What I Got Wrong</h3><div>After seeing the trailer all the way back in May, I was worried that Abrams was going to take Star Wars and make it into any other action movie instead of making a space opera film. He didn't use any of the cheesy wipes and the action was so frenetic as to remind me of a Michael Bay film.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm happy to say that Episode VII felt like a Star Wars film. I only counted a couple of the scene wipes, but they were there, and the action, while fast paced, didn't overwhelm the characters in the way that other action movies tend to do.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Nostalgia</h3><div>What Abrams did supremely well, was to evoke nostalgia for the original trilogy (Episodes IV-VI). It felt like Star Wars in a way that the prequels (Episodes I-III) never quite did -- fun side note, <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/12/18/george-lucas-brilliant-ex-wife-was-secret-weapon-in-original-star-wars/" target="_blank">George Lucas' first wife, Marcia</a>, had an incredible impact on the OrigTrig that was noticeably missing from the prequels. &nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>There were callbacks, references, inspirations, and direct quotes from the OrigTrig all throughout <i>The Force Awakens</i>&nbsp;(TFA). They brought back several members of the original cast and used the iconic John Williams score to further evoke the feel of Star Wars.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But, in many ways, it felt as if the nostalgia of the movie was more important than telling a new story. If you have seen both <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan</a></i>&nbsp;and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Star Trek: Into Darkness</a></i>, you'll understand what I'm trying to say. Abrams clearly wanted to evoke nostalgia for <i>The Wrath of Khan</i>&nbsp;in <i>Into Darkness</i>&nbsp;and he mostly succeeded.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>And that's the problem. For me there was too much nostalgia. There were too many references. To many ways where the movie was the same thing only slightly different. And yes, I'm talking about both <i>Into Darkness</i>&nbsp;and <i>The Force Awakens</i>.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>After having seen TFA only once, I can't make a definitive statement, but I can't recall a single scene without at least one reference or nod to the OrigTrig. It may have only been a setting or a line, but it was so prevalent that it began to distract me from the story.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Storytelling</h3><div>JJ Abrams is a master at his craft. Period. I can't take anything away from him because I think he accomplished exactly what he set out to do: restart the Star Wars franchise.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The prequels failed in all of the ways that TFA succeeded. Abrams was able to take the mess left to him by Lucas and reshape it into something that feels like my childhood. It feels like watching Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker battle on a catwalk or Han and Chewy fighting Storm Troopers on Hoth or Princess Leia staring down Vader on the Death Star. And that was a great feeling.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But TFA fails in all of the ways that the prequels succeeded (and yes, the <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/george-lucas-nearly-wrote-perfect-prequel-trilogy-he-just-didnt-seem-notice/" target="_blank">prequels did succeed in many ways</a>). While the prequels were hokey and filled with intolerable or unsympathetic characters, they succeeded in telling a new story rather than rehashing the same old yarn with different characters. But TFA doesn't bring much that's new. We have new characters, but the same dualistic fight. We're 30 years into the future, but nothing in the galaxy seems to have changed.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>In many ways, TFA feels like a reboot rather than a sequel. It feels like the board has been reset so someone else can tell the story that Lucas did in the 70s and 80s. It feels like what Abrams has done to Star Trek is happening to Star Wars.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><h3>Fan vs. Critic</h3><div>As I have grown and learned more about the craft of story, I've had to develop the skills of a critic. The problem is that I often can't turn off that part of my mind, even when I want to. It is immeasurably helpful to my writing for me to be able to see the beats in a story, to see the structure, the character development, and the plot flow. But it's also a hindrance to my enjoyment.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>As a fan, as best as I can still separate that part of my mind from the critic, I thought TFA was as good as the OrigTrig, and far better than the prequels in so many ways. I will watch it again, I will enjoy it, and I will own it. I'm a sucker for Star Wars and Abrams has done nothing to undermine that. In fact, he has done a lot to restore my faith in the franchise.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>But as an older, wiser, more critical fan, I'm seeing the bones underneath the skin; I'm seeing that Star Wars is more than a story to be told, it's a franchise to be marketed. That was always true of the OrigTrig, I was just too young, too naive, and too much in love with Star Wars to notice or care.&nbsp;</div>James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3167372460971098022.post-49451478946608934062015-06-24T16:30:00.000-07:002015-06-24T16:30:10.080-07:00My Grandfather was a Racist and I Love Him<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KkGA0BMMYKY/VYs3v24wsNI/AAAAAAABlPc/NiKDASYxERE/s1600/Jack%2BWood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KkGA0BMMYKY/VYs3v24wsNI/AAAAAAABlPc/NiKDASYxERE/s320/Jack%2BWood.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I love my grandfather (Jack Wood). He passed away over 20 years ago, but I still remember him fondly. He took me to see the redwoods of California for the first time in my life, he took me on an ATV for the first time in my life, and it was at his house that I first got to watch satellite TV (all 4 channels of it).<br /><br />But he was also a racist. I'm not talking about the overt, violent, hostile racism that is in the news so much today. To the best of my knowledge he was never involved in anything like that. But I do know that he grew up (born in Missouri) thinking that people who weren't white were somehow less.<br /><br />So what am I supposed to do with that?<br /><br />There's a good chance that your grandparents were racist too. Even 50 or 75 years ago most people thought that different skin color meant something about the quality of the person. And I'm not relegating this to only white people (though people of European descent have benefitted most from racial stereotypes in the United States). It was a far different time. People hated each other for the color of their skin.<br /><br />So, what are we supposed to do with that?<br /><br />What are we supposed to do with the fact that some of our ancestors owned slaves, others were slaves, and others sold people into slavery? What are we supposed to do with the fact that some of our ancestors were reprehensible people? What are we supposed to do with the fact that we owe no small part of our place in this world to the lives, beliefs, and experiences of our ancestors?<br /><br />Embrace and critique.<br /><br />We don't need to ignore our past to recognize that it wasn't always good. I can look at my grandfather and see the good he did in providing for his family, taking me on adventures, and raising his kids. But I don't have to accept his mistakes to love him. I don't have to reject his whole life to critique what he did wrong.<br /><br />You don't either -- not that you need to love my grandpa, but for your family and your history. And we don't either, for our shared history as Americans. We can call out the great things that have happened in our past -- bringing freedom and democracy, fighting to protect the innocent, working to make the world a better place -- without ignoring the truly bad things our country has done.<br /><br />I love my country, <i>and</i> I want it to be better. I love my country, <i>and</i> I'm willing to admit that it has struggles. We've been racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, and committed genocide. Our nation isn't innocent. But we've also fought for freedom, rights, hope, justice, and equality.<br /><br />I can both love my country and critique it just like I can love my grandpa despite his flaws and mistakes.<br /><br />So don't give up on loving your history. Don't give up your past. Don't give up your heritage because it might contain some great or small sins that you're ashamed of. And, don't give up the constant striving to be better. Don't settle for the way things are. Don't stop pushing for equality, freedom, and hope for every person.<br /><br />You can do both. You can hold both together.James T Woodhttps://plus.google.com/109768980342403717043noreply@blogger.com0